Joshua Tree National Park

Hi all, I've been in Joshua Tree National Park the last couple days. This is a superb park for landscape photography.... the combination of interesting boulder piles and gnarly joshua trees is awesome. The weather has been very tough to photograph in..... extremely windy and cold with bouts of overcast skies. Nevertheless I've worked hard to get a few good images.
And for all my friends back up north, envious that I am in a warmer climate, it's been cold here the past couple days. I froze my butt off camping the last two nights and woke up to heavy snowfall this morning (will post a photo of the snow later)! Tonight I'm staying in a park with electical hookups so I can run my heater.

I'm now en route to try to see (and hopefully photograph) a Lewis' Woodpecker in the San Bernardino Mountains. This is a bird I've been wanting to find for a long time.

A quick post-script.... it's snowing like mad! The park where the woodpecker was seen is closed due to the weather.... damn! Crossing my fingers that it opens back up tomorrow.

Photo 1: Me and the van in Joshua Tree.


Photo 2: Backlit Teddy Bear Cholla
This species of cactus is evil..... they almost jump at you. And once you've gotten stuck, it's a pain to get the spines out.... I still have several stuck in my hand from when I shot this photo.
1DSIII; 17-40; Singh-Ray LB warming polarizer & 2 stop hard edge ND grad


Photo 3: Jumbo Rocks campground at dusk
1DSIII; 17-40; Singh-Ray Gold-n-Blue polarizer
The sky was fairly blah, but I salvaged the photo with the Gold-n-Blue polarizer.


Photo 4: Moonglare through Joshua Tree
I shot this well after sunset will the nearly full moon rising.
1DSIII; 17-40; Singh-Ray 2 stop hard edge ND grad
Light-painted the foreground plants slightly with a flashlight.